An opinion or belief authoritatively stated, a truth appertaining to faith or morals, revealed by God, transmitted by the Apostles in the Scriptures or tradition, and proposed by the Church as an article of faith, to be accepted by the faithful. In the sense that a dogma is an idea, it follows that dogmatism is necessary for religion, since a religion without ideas is meaningless. The dogmas of the Church, being the intellectual conception and verbal express of Divine truth, naturally take on the characteristic of truth, viz., unchangeableness or immutability. Mathematics has certain dogmas which are permanent and fixed because they are grounded in the very nature of reason itself, e.g., the principle that the whole is greater than any of its parts. The dogmas of the Church, on the other hand, are true because grounded on the authority of the Divine Reason who reveals them. The term dogma is also used in an odious sense of a statement made arbitrarily or arrogantly.